“Ah Lord God! behold, Thou hast made the heaven and the earth by Thy great power....There is nothing too hard for Thee.” Jeremiah 32:17
It is quite possible that you were hit today by a speck of a star falling from the sky! However, the speck would have been so tiny that you would not have been aware of it. It is estimated that about ten thousand tons of “stardust” from outer space come to the earth every year!
How thrilling to be looking into the night sky and see a bright streak of light falling toward the earth. These are called shooting stars or falling stars. Sometimes showers of these stars are visible.
Actually, most shooting stars are just little pieces of material no larger than a grain of sand. They have traveled millions of miles through space until, attracted by earth’s gravity, they turn toward it. Traveling many times faster than a bullet, they enter our atmosphere. Friction from the air makes them white hot, and they burn up in the flash that you see in just a moment or two. All that remains is a speck of ash or rocky mineral that turns to dust, eventually falling to the ground or into lakes or oceans. It is the goodness of God that provides the earth’s protecting atmosphere so these do not harm us.
These shooting stars are actually meteors, and countless billions of them are believed to be racing through space all the time. Over the centuries, a few larger ones have fallen to the earth without being burned up and destroyed. Those that reach the earth without burning up are called meteorites. One has been found in Africa that has been estimated to weigh 60 tons. In the Museum of Natural History in Washington D.C., another meteorite weighing 31 tons is on display, which is only part of a 200-ton meteorite found in Greenland.
No one really knows where they come from or how they are formed. Some think they may be parts of a comet’s tail, sweeping the sky, or particles that escaped from the Asteroid Belt that travels in a great orbit between Jupiter and Mars.
However, we can be sure that God knows all about meteors and meteorites, and perhaps He directs some of them our way to remind us that our world is just a speck in His vast creation. But what an important speck it is! It was only on this earth that He created and placed man. It was only to this world that He sent His Son, the Lord Jesus, to provide a way for sinners to be saved now from their sins. It was the death of Jesus on Calvary’s cross that paid the debt of sin for all who accept Him as their Saviour. It is written, “Who His own self bare our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness: by whose stripes ye were healed” (1 Peter 2:24).
ML-06/22/2014